Video: How to make an HDR image using Microsoft Excel... seriously

Photographers have many different kinds of software for producing high dynamic range images, but Microsoft Excel probably doesn't make your list of photo editing apps. Well... be prepared to change your mind.

On the off chance you don't know what Microsoft Excel is, it's a spreadsheet application that's primarily used for business application. But in May of last year, Columbia University computer science student Kevin Chen showed that is was also capable of producing an HDR photo using some complicated math and a couple dozen GBs of RAM.

Before coming to Columbia, Chen worked as an intern at Apple, working on camera technology. It was that experience—understanding the math behind digital photography in general and high dynamic range imagery specifically—that allowed him to implement the "system of linear equations" that is typically used in HDR imaging.

After turning the original photo grayscale, and using each cell in Excel as a different "pixel", he was able to implement this math (and zoom way out) to reveal his final product. Here is the color before and grayscale after:

Sure, you probably don't want to make Excel your primary HDR processing software. But Chen's presentation reveals something that is easy to lose sight of when you're processing digital files and working with photographs: as far as your computer is concerned, it's all pixel values and math.

Check out the full presentation up top, and then head over to Chen's website if you want to know more about the young computer scientist.

Funny, but kind of not all that relevant. All he did was linearizing the JPEG sRGB. Not necessary if he used the RAW. And ... where is the HDR tone mapping? More talk and jokes than content. But, of course, a funny guy.

It may not be practical but it is definitely didactical and relevant in the digital age. At least as relevant as knowing the chemistry behind film processing back in the day and knowing how to tweak it for different effects. IMO.

Excel can do nice things... I designed our utility room and kitchen floor tiling layout with the random number generator, two shades of brown tiles, the floor getting lighter from 95% dark to 80% light along the centreline. Simple compared to this, but still useful and nobody I have talked to had realised how easy it was.

To be honest it isn't so much what he presents, but how he presents it. It is very interesting and joyful. I would highly recommend to become a lecturer. It would be educating and enjoyful for the students.

What he presents it is using a little logic if you know what happens behind. Actually there are many tools like Mathematica or Matlab that can do easily functions on matrixes. If he discovers also that on Excel you can use VBA, then he can do whatever he wants. With cost of CPU and memory as we have seen thought.

I suppose for simplicity also he didn't used decimal numbers or non 8 bit representations which can make more accurate result. This could simulate more the 12 or 14 bit of the RAW format and not of the "JPEG", which is more actually "BMP" like format.

The original picture obviously has blown highlights. No HDR process can restore them. Unless he had the RAW file. But the funny thing is, to load image pixels in Excel you need some sort of a converter program, and if you have to write it, you can also do HDR process there as well. No Excel is ever needed.

I liked the presentation so much that I've downloaded the video (or is it that I've thereby stollen it, as per grumpy comment below? It makes me think that the words themselves aren't yet copyrighted, and they should duly be, so the speaker has to pay a nominal fee to use them in his speech. I mean, come on, at least the brand names, for starters. And use a phoneme equivalent to ® or ™ in your speech every time you have to mention them. I would have downvoted the comment I am referring to, but there isn't a button for it).

Another personal achievement knit picked by members at this site. Try showing us your achievements before bad rapping another persons. True it is not and probably never will be a mainstream photo editor but I say "Congrats to Kevin Chen for his accomplishment".

In your fallacy, one needs to be better than a another before he can make an opinion about the other.

So am I right that you don't talk about anyone until you are better in any given task than they are ? Meaning, you don't talk about politics unless you have better success being politician? You don't talk about your kids grades, before you have gone through same updated education system?You don't talk about other people opinions, before you have collected all the information that the other commentators has?

See.... You just splitted out a fallacy.... And you are just what you say others are...

Actually there should be it. In Photoshop you have the matrix editing, that is exactly what is that all about. You get all the image data in one matrix and you can manipulate each pixel value in that matrix as you like.

Not to be too picky, but "it's a spreadsheet application that's primarily used for business application" is just a bit silly as there is a huge engineering/scientific user base for Excel. One would be amazed at the number of things that fly around, get talked at, go into you, or get you around that are in part designed by engineers and scientists using Excel. It's a great all-around Swiss Army Knife tool for many complex analyses and calculations, though it has it's limits for sure.

" There are way more businesses than science orgs" and what does that say about the English-speaking world? It says that we're lazy, uncreative sods who don't deserve the education and resources we have here. Our time is over and we need to step aside and let people who will really use the gifts we have hoarded in North America, New Zealand, Australia, and the British Isles.

Spreadsheet is just like a pen and paper, difference is that you get automatic rows and columns and automatic calculation filling.

Paper and pen allows you to write, draw or calculate, that is why pen and paper is the ultimate tools even today at modern era, but they are so simple that they require skills from the user, while these digital ones are so complex that they require little from the user.

That is the reason why software like WiciCal was omportant as you could do all the things with it on the field from engineering calculations to home bookkeeping and labeling etc.

It’s not often that I am super-impressed. But this guy is pretty baddazz 👍.

FWIW - I developed an Excel sheet with tons of VBA code for a brainwave entrainment product I used, and shared it freely with that site’s user base. If you’re interested, it’s really cool ... allowing you to visualize the resultant light patterns that will be generated by the device:

That's more than I did when I manipulated pixels at pixel level with machine language. Highlights would still be blown if pegged at 255x3, but otherwise the image would be a fully scalable HDR. You could just enter an intensity value and scale the effect. It's basically under the hood Lightroom/Photoshop coding using Excel as its base instead of those programs. It's not very exciting really, but the fact that someone was willing to spend the time to do this shows the potential for machine-learning AI developing software when doing so is generally repetitive tasks across table grids. A computer array could spend 10,000 man hours in a few days making something like this (although the programming phase would take longer, the point is that future programming could come from actually laying down the network and letting it run for a real 10,000 hours and see what comes out on the other side of that massive amount of coding).

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